


Last Year's Words Belong to Next Year's Language

by undercat



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cultural heritage of the Peredhil, F/M, Gen, baby El-twins 2.0, languages and language politics, naming customs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:24:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercat/pseuds/undercat
Summary: Her sons she named Elros and Elrond; and after the manner of her brothers the first ended in a Beorian word, and the second in an Elvish.Elwing decides to learn her father's language, and later names her sons.





	Last Year's Words Belong to Next Year's Language

**Author's Note:**

> The quote in the summary comes from _The Problem of Ros_ in “The Peoples of Middle-Earth”. I do make a slight deviation: that text has Earendil away at the twins' birth and Elwing names their children alone. I've discarded this.
> 
> Notes on names and languages are at the end.

When Elwing was very little, her father would speak to her in a language she didn't know, for she had just begun speaking when he was killed. But she dreamed of it on occasion, and she remembered the sounds and the forms of the words. At times, she would speak those words to herself, trying to make her mouth and tongue move as her father's had, but none of her tutors knew what the words meant, and she didn't think they liked when she asked them.

So she stopped asking, and if she still heard her father's voice in her dreams, she kept it to herself and hid his words in her heart.

When the refugees from Gondolin arrived, Elwing met them, dressed in her finest clothing (her maid tutted about how unfit they were, how in Menegroth she would have played in clothes finer still, but Elwing thought her tunic marvelous, with its pearls woven throughout). The Gondolindrim were led by a Lady Idril and a Lord Tuor, and they looked tired and worn, but then, everyone who came to the Havens looked tired and worn. Idril's son was with her – his name was Earendil, which sounded silly but made Lord Angchir frown – and when he looked at her he smiled, and she smiled back.

Elwing soon found that she liked Earendil very much, and was well pleased when his mother let them play together.

Elwing liked Tuor as well, more than she liked Idril. Sometimes he would tell her and Earendil stories about his people, about the mortal heroes who fought against Morgoth and his armies. His tales delighted her, even if she and Earendil suspected that he didn't always tell them the _entire_ story: they still didn't know what happened to Túrin and Nienor. (Earendil thought that they had their own town, a city like Sirion. Elwing deemed it unlikely – wouldn't Tuor had said so if that were the case? - but if it were so, she hoped Lady Morwen dwelt with them too.)

The leaders of the Gondolindrim sat on Sirion's council, but Tuor spoke on behalf of the Edain, who trickled into the Havens in ever greater numbers. Elwing wasn't supposed to spend too much time with Men, though she didn't understand why, but apparently it was fine for her to speak with Tuor. (She didn't understand that either: wasn't he a Man as well?) But she was the ruler of all the people of Sirion, including the Edain, so she made a point of seeking him out to talk about their needs, and had him take her to the mortal neighborhoods.

(At times the Edain looked strangely at her. Elwing wasn't sure she _minded_ exactly: it wasn't a bad look, and they looked at Earendil the same way.)

The first time she and Tuor visited a newly born child for her to say words of blessing over it, as was her duty, the Beorian midwife Aerdis set her hand to her heart and said something to her in a language Elwing did not know, but that sounded familiar: she had heard such words before.

Most of the Edain spoke Sindarin: the uglier Sindarin of the North, not the elegant version that Elwing's tutors taught her. Some spoke Quenya as well, as Tuor did, or the woodland dialects of the Nandor. But sometimes she heard them speak another language, whose name she did not know. It wasn't soft and murmury, like Sindarin, or flowy like Quenya, but was instead rolling: it had a strange rhythm and noises made in the back of the throat. It wasn't pretty, exactly, but she liked the sound: it reminded her of her father.

She asked Tuor about what Aerdis had said, after.

“She is a wisewoman, and she blessed you in turn,” Tuor told her, “in thanks for your blessing over the babe, and because you are a lady of her House.”

“What do you mean, 'of her House'? I'm Iathrim, the Queen of the Sindar!” Elwing said.

“Of course you are!” said Tuor. “But you can also be a descendant of the House of Beor. And aren't you part god as well, through Melian?”

Elwing smiled. She rather liked the sound of that. Perhaps she could learn to set a guard around Sirion, as Melian had Doriath, and keep everyone safe. Still:

“Why did she speak in the language of Men, and not Sindarin? That's what _I_ speak, and Aerdis does as well.”

“Well, yes,” Tuor said, “but words can be powerful things, and sometimes they have more power in their original form, for augury or for magic or just for the connection to one's ancestors. Aerdis would no more have spoken in Sindarin than she would have spoken in Haladin, even though that is also a language of the Edain.”

That made sense to her: when singers sung walls strong or asked crops to grow, their words were often old and not used in daily speech. But Tuor's words gave her a new question.

“There's more than one Mannish language?” Yet even as she spoke, she felt silly; of _course_ there would be more than one. Elves didn't speak just one tongue, and there was more than one House of the Edain, and the Easterlings too. And now that she thought of it, she could hear a difference: sometimes the words were nasally, like the speaker had broken their nose, other times there were strange popping sounds.

“Several,” said Tuor. “The people of the Houses of Beor and Hador speak Taliska, though they sound quite different, just as the Sindarin of Doriath and Balar sound different. The Haladin have their own tongue, and the Easterlings have several as well, though no one speaks _those_ here, at least not in public.”

Taliska, the words of the people of Beor. That was what her father must have spoken, the language of his father Beren. Elwing decided then that she would learn how to speak her father's tongue; she would learn what he had said to her as a baby. Undoubtedly it had just been the words anyone would say to an infant, but… Idril had said once that in the West, Elves could return to life. Elwing had deemed it silly and wondered if Idril were making up stories, but secretly she dreamt of meeting her parents again. If she ever did, she decided she would speak this _Taliska_ to her father. He would like that, she thought; he would be proud of her.

She raised her head imperiously. “You will teach me how to speak Taliska.”

“I can't -” Tuor started to say.

“What do you mean you can't?” Elwing demanded.

He grinned and Elwing glared at him. “I mean, I can't speak Taliska as the Beorians do; the people of Hador speak a much different dialect. But I promise I'll find someone to teach you. You'll pick it up quickly, I'm sure; you learned Quenya without much trouble, didn't you?”

 _How does he know? That's a secret._ Elwing wasn't supposed to speak Quenya, even if some of the Gondolindrim spoke it. Thingol's ban was no longer enforced, not with many of Sirion's artisans and warriors coming from Gondolin, but it was still the language of the Kinslayers who killed her parents.

But Earendil spoke it too, and _he_ wasn't bad, so Quenya couldn't be all bad either, and besides, _languages_ didn't kill people. She had wanted to learn it, and she was the ruler of Sirion and the heir of Thingol: no one could tell her what not to do.

Still, Elwing and Earendil just spoke it in private sometimes when she wanted to practice, and Tuor shouldn't have known. She glared at him fiercely. “How do you know? Were you listening secretly? Did Earendil tell you?” _Earendil wouldn't tell, would he?_ The thought that he might have made a pang in her heart.

Tuor raised up his hands in protest. “Peace! Earendil told me nothing. I was coming to call you two to dinner, and I overheard. It was just the once; it wasn't on purpose.” He studied her. “I don't think it's bad that you learned Quenya, Elwing. Earendil speaks it, and he's your friend.”

Earendil _was_ her friend. He was nice and fun to be around and he made her laugh. And… “He's like me,” she said eventually.

He was. There were but a few Elven children in Sirion, and they grew far more slowly than she did. The Edain weren't like her either: they couldn't see or hear as well, and they couldn't speak with their minds. But Earendil grew as Elwing did, and they had overheard the same whispered conversations about how they were peredhil, how no one knew if they would die of age or if their Mannish blood would make them weak. Earendil would shrug, not bothered, and say that he and Elwing would prove them wrong, but Elwing would grow angry: _Beren_ wasn't weak and neither was her father Dior, and besides, she had the blood of Melian as well, and none of the rest of them had _that._

Tuor sighed. “I suppose he is,” he said. She didn't understand the tone in his voice: he sounded sad and yet not at the same time.

Elwing wondered why he was sad. There wasn't anything _wrong_ with her, or with Earendil. And besides, she remembered the genealogies she had studied. “You're like me too, a little: we're related. Your grandfather was my grandfather's cousin. Belegund was his name.”

Tuor's face brightened. “So he was and so we are! I'll let you in on a secret: I wish I spoke Taliska as Belegund would have. My mother might have taught me, but she died when I was very young; I have no memories of her.”

Elwing thought that sounded so sad. Her mother had died too, but at least she could remember her face and voice, and the way she laughed.

“Of course, she might not have taught me,” continued Tuor. “Sindarin is a far finer language than any tongue of the Edain.”

Before their conversation Elwing might have agreed, but now she wasn't sure. Lúthien had loved Beren, who spoke a Mannish tongue, and Lúthien was the daughter of a goddess: surely _she_ would know what was fair and fine. And besides, Beren was a hero, and so were his parents Barahir and Emeldir.

(Her father spoke this Taliska; he was a hero. He had died to save her.)

So Elwing said, “ _I_ don't think so. _Lúthien_ thought Taliska was a good language, and she taught it to my father.” _Taliska._ The more she heard the name, the more she liked its sound.

Tuor laughed. He laughed a lot, as Earendil did; she liked it. “Wait till you know the language before you decide. But if you want to learn the language of Beren's people, I will find you a teacher. You'll have to study, of course, but I'm sure you'll learn quickly, oh clever one.”

“Of course I will!” said Elwing, and added, “can Earendil study with me?”

“If he wishes, and if you are there, I think he will,” said Tuor. “It would be good for him: my wife's people are fond indeed of linguistics, so Idril will approve, and I think it's wise to be able to talk to people in their own tongue.”

Elwing frowned. She wasn't sure what _linguistics_ meant, but by Tuor's use of it, she gathered it had to do with language, and it angered her that the Noldor thought themselves the best at everything. So she protested, “Daeron of Doriath was a master of studying languages too, and he was _better_ at it than any Noldo!”

“See? You come by such skill naturally, Lady Elwing.”

Elwing kept frowning: she didn't think she wanted to be like _Daeron_ either. “Lúthien learned Taliska,” she said, “I want to be like _her._ ”

Tuor was smiling; Elwing liked his face when he smiled: he looked like Earendil. “I think you already are: you have her strength of spirit. And I know the perfect teacher. His name is Dírhaval, a poet, and he speaks Taliska very well indeed.”

 

~~~

 

“Have you thought of names for them?” asked her husband, looking with wonder down at their boys.

Earendil had not left her side for over a year: he had not taken to the sea since she conceived; he had been with her throughout her pregnancy, had set his hands on her belly and laughed to feel the babes kick at him. “I see that they are your children indeed, inflicting violence on me already!” he had said, and laughed again when she proved his words and pushed him onto the bed. But afterwards he had curled up beside her, and they had reached out to their children's spirits in delighted astonishment, small and tiny, near-formless and so loved.

He had been beside her in her labor too, holding her against his back, supporting her as she walked around the room before the cramping pains grew too strong. Her healer Ningaladh had worried that the birth was too difficult, but Aerdis had named it a blessedly easy labor (if _that_ were easy, Elwing couldn't imagine what the midwife would deem hard, and marveled at the strength of the women of the Edain). But her husband had been there, lending her strength from his spirit, and he had cried to behold the sons they had made.

And now he stood with her and their children.

(Her _children:_ how overfull her heart was, so full it might burst in her chest.)

“Elrond, I think, for this one,” Elwing said, reaching down to touch the babe on the left. He grabbed one of her fingers and she laughed with joy.

 _Dome of stars, vault of the heavens_. She had heard tales of the beauty of Menegroth, how lights were laid in the carved ceiling in the pattern of constellations, like the stars Elu Thingol had been named for, as her brothers had been named for Elu: she would remember them in her son's name, and would remember her lost home.

“A good name; pleasing to the ear,” said Earendil softly.

They were silent a long moment, and Earendil held her tight. She knew what he was in his heart, for she felt it too: a black fear, for Morgoth and the Doom and the Oath all loomed; what future could they have? She made herself breathe. There was yet hope: she had not named Elrond just for her murdered relatives and lost kingdom, for she knew with a mother's foresight that his years would be as numberless as all the bright stars in the heavens, as limitless as the black expanse in which they were set. _There is yet hope_ , she told herself fiercely. _We will prevail._

Earendil saw the turn of her mind and she felt his answering resolve. He reached down to tickle their other son. (They really did need a name; she shouldn't think of him as not-Elrond.)

“He shares your likeness, lucky boy.” Earendil grinned at her. “Perhaps Elwingedwen?”

Elwing wrinkled her nose. She supposed the boys did throw to her: they had her coloring - black hair and gray eyes, not Earendil's blond and blue - though in truth they looked mostly like infants, with scrunched faces and fat cheeks. “Elwing the Second? Does he not deserve his own name? And what a terrible name to saddle a babe with; it has no grace of speech.”

“Hmph.” Earendil kissed her neck, and she arched into his touch.

“But what about you: shall you give them names as well? You have two yourself, after all.”

Earendil looked thoughtful. “Perhaps,” he answered. “An _essekilme_ is a good excuse for a party, at least, but _Second Elwing_ may be the extent of my naming skills.”

“Ardamíre!” Elwing said, and elbowed him in the stomach, laughing at his exaggerated oof. She remembered the small ceremony Idril had arranged for her son to decide what name he would go by. Earendil's _essekilme_ had been in Quenya and held in private; she had sneaked in. She had been about to protest the use of the language in her presence (for she was wroth that she hadn't been invited), but it was a party for her friend, and his face had lit up with a bright smile when he saw her: his joy had always soothed her anger. It was then that her future husband had chosen the name he would be called by, his father-name: _friend of the sea._

(It tore at her heart sometimes. She hoped that the sea would remain his friend in turn, but the sea was fickle and so were its gods.)

But he had remained Ardamíre with his family. _Jewel of the world_ , the name Idril had given him, and now that she and Tuor were gone, Elwing was the only person to call him thus. She liked it that way. They both gave much of themselves, Elwing to the Havens and Earendil to the desperate hope of aid from the West. ( _Aid that is even more necessary now_ , she thought, looking at their sleeping sons.) But she had Earendil's other name, at the least: Ardamíre was hers alone.

She grasped her husband's hand tightly. “You're on your own, there; I'm not naming them on your behalf if you want them to have father-names as well.”

Earendil huffed and she thought. Her father had given her brother Eluréd an Edainic name.

“I chose _Elrond_ in part for Menegroth, and in remembrance of my brothers,” she said after a pause, “but I am not the scion of Thingol alone; are we not also children of great Men? Let us give this one a Mannish name, for Beren, and for Huor.” As she spoke, something that may or may not have been foresight struck her, and she knew her words were wise.

Earendil was silent for a long moment. She wondered what he was thinking: his mother had been powerful in the Sight, and Earendil had a touch of Idril's gift.

“Elros then,” he said finally, “for my second Elwing.”

She turned to face him fully and laughed, for _ros_ was the Taliskan word for _foam_ , as _wing_ was in Sindarin. She liked it: a fair name for her fair son, child of Elven Kings and Lords of Men. _Star-spray_ , like the milky road of stars the Edain said the spirits of their dead walked along as they left the bounds of Arda. Her name, and now her son's.

“They are good names.” Elwing laid her head on Earendil's shoulder and intertwined her fingers with his. She smiled at her sons, and knew Earendil to be smiling too. “Elros and Elrond.”

The light of the stars shone down upon Elwing's family, and for a time at least there was nothing but joy in her heart.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Taliska is the language spoken by both the Beorians and the Hadorians. The dialects were quite divergent, possibly enough for the two to be considered different, if closely related, languages. Lúthien learned it from Beren and their son Dior grew up bilingual. 
> 
> Quenya was spoken in Gondolin and it was Earendil's first language. Interestingly, the Quenya name Earendil is used throughout the Legendarium and Earendil's ship has a Quenya name as well, which implies that Thingol's Ban wasn't followed in Sirion. Elwing speaking Quenya may seem unlikely, but I doubt that Earendil would have named Vingilot in Quenya had she had a strong objection, and she was able to speak to the Teleri: Quenya and Telerin are probably mutually intelligible, whereas Sindarin and Telerin are definitely not.
> 
>  _Essekilme_ is a Quenya word that literally means 'name-choosing'. It refers to a ceremony in which a child chooses which names they would go by: Noldorin children, at least in Valinor, were given a name by each of their parents, though I'm inclined to think that the Sindar did not share that custom.
> 
> Elwing means 'star-foam' in Sindarin. The _el_ element means 'star', but it is also a dynastic reference to her great-grandfather Elu Thingol. Tolkien says at one point that the _wing_ element in Elwing's name is Taliskan, but _wing_ ( _gwing_ in its unmutated form) is also found in Sindarin, which is probably the better etymology.
> 
> Elwingedwen means 'second Elwing', or something like it, in my amateurish Sindarin.
> 
> Elros means 'star-foam', which is also the meaning of Elwing's name. Tolkien supposed for a while that the _ros_ element in Elros's name comes from the Beorian language, not Sindarin. It means 'foam' or 'whitecap'. He apparently rejected that etymology but I have kept it here. (Perhaps _ros_ was Taliskan originally, and entered Sindarin as a loan word?) 
> 
> Eluréd ('heir of Elu') was one of Dior and Nimloth's twin sons. The _réd(a)_ ('heir') element is said to be Beorian in origin. Unlike _ros_ or _(g)wing_ , it is without a doubt Taliskan and not Sindarin.
> 
> Edited to correct Dírhaval's name: I misspelled in the original.


End file.
